Carts are often used by vendors on city streets as a means of storing and transporting a variety of food and beverage items. Such carts are often used at garden parties and country clubs to provide food and drink to people at locations remote from buildings and/or sources of electricity where storage, refrigeration, and dispensing equipment are not readily available. Food and drink carts are also used at in variety of other locations.
Regardless of where they are used, carts usually include space to store food and beverages to be sold later. Often, carts for dispensing beverages will have an insulated container filled with ice in which cans or bottles of soda, juice, beer, wine, or other beverages which are to be served chilled are stored and maintained in a chilled condition. Carts are also employed to carry and dispense heated beverages or other liquids such as soup. Such carts usually include two or more wheels which allow them to be transported from place to place.
The food and beverage items sold on carts are usually of prepackaged into individual serving sizes, such as cans of soda. To provide a cart with the ability for premium quality beverage dispensing requires equipping the carts with electric power, water tanks, and/or post-mix beverage component tanks, among other equipment. Such equipment is expensive to purchase, install, and operate. Additionally, such equipment cannot be easily placed on a cart without making the cart too big to be easily transportable. Further, a source of electricity is not usually available for a transportable cart and connecting a cart to a source of electricity would reduce the transportability of the cart.